The invention relates to a floor covering and to an installation method.
Prefinished parquet, hardwood floors or laminate floors are constructed from several rows of floorboards having a largely rectangular configuration. Conventional floorboards have on one longitudinal side and one head face continuous grooves, and on the corresponding opposite longitudinal side or head face continuous tongues which formfittingly match the grooves. The floorboards are installed by joining grooves and tongues, whereby the floorboards of two adjacent rows are arranged with a mutual offset.
It is known to provide on the grooves and tongues mechanical locking means which lockingly engage in adjacent floorboards of the floor covering. This arrangement is intended to prevent gaps from forming in the installed floor covering due to expansion or contraction processes. Matching locking elements are formed on the groove and tongue of the floorboards as indentations, recesses or projections, to hold connected floorboards in the joined position without an adhesive.
The floorboards are sometimes difficult to install. Once the mechanical locking elements between groove and tongue are interlocked in the longitudinal side or head face, it becomes often difficult to establish the formfitting connection for the respective other side. Typically, the floorboards are rotated or latched into each other along their longitudinal sides and subsequently displaced laterally, so that the locking rails engage at the head faces. To this end, gentle hammer strokes can be applied from the opposite head face by using a tamping block. There is, however, the risk that the floorboards can be damaged even when taking great care.
DE 20 2005 012 603 U1 addresses this problem by providing grooves in the head faces of the floorboards, wherein the grooves of two abutting head faces correspond with one another and form a channel, in which afterwards a spring is inserted, which bridges the joint between the two floorboards and thereby stabilizes the connection between the floorboards. The spring ensures a high load bearing capacity of the joint region in the vertical direction.
The subject matter described in DE 101 38 285 A1A proposes a similar solution. Therein a locking element bridging the joint can be inserted into a locking recess by pushing or hammering. The tolerances of the locking element and the locking recess can be designed such that the locking element can be easily or tightly inserted into the locking recess.
EP 1 650 375 A1 discloses an alternative to a later insertion of the locking element or of a separate locking tongue. In this approach, one groove at a head face has a locking tongue made of an elastic plastic. The locking tongue is beveled on the top side and retreats completely into the groove at the head face when an abutting floorboard is installed at the head face, and springs into the corresponding groove at the head face of the abutting floorboard, due to the resilient effect of the plastic material, so that they mutually interlock. This obviates the need for subsequent insertion of the locking tongue on the head face.